THE WORLD FROM WASHINGTON
THE WORLD FROM WASHINGTON Like those mysterious Russian submarines that used to be "sighted'' off the Eastern seaboard every year just in time to help the U.S. Navy win its appropriations, the...
...There were those, good friends of mine, who came to me a few weeks ago suggesting I withdraw Judge Haynsworth's nomination due to the fact that a doubt had been raised and that politically it was going to be very difficult to wield...
...We believe that the American people are mature enough to understand the need for it...
...Laird, we are told, doubts the effectiveness of the "Chinese argument" as a vote-getter for Safeguard, but he hasn't ruled it out...
...None of the great decisions made by a President are easy...
...I did not do so...
...At a news conference earlier this week he declared that the next step in Vietnam must be "the establishment of a broadly based national government in Saigon which would have the confidence, trust and allegiance of most of the factions if not all...
...Last October 22 the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee headed by Senator Stuart Symington, which is examining the nature and extent of American overseas commitments, finished taking testimony behind closed doors on the U.S...
...Ever since, Senator Symington and the State Department have been locked in a dispute over release of the transcript of the Subcommittee's hearings...
...Laird, having had occasion to ponder the dimensions of the threat while vacationing in Puerto Rico, returned to Washington in January to tell reporters that "the Soviet Union has continued to go forward with the deployment of strategic offensive weapons systems, not only the SS-9 but also the SS-11 and other offensive strategic weapons...
...That would seem to be a clear mandate for swift release of the testimony taken by the Symington subcommittee...
...It would be easy to buy some popularity by going along with the new isolationists...
...The Department's view is that release of an uncensored transcript would compromise "the national security interests...
...This is not the first time that he may be ahead of his time...
...Televised speech on Vietnam, November 3, 1969...
...Just what those interests are, in the case of the secret war in Laos, is somewhat difficult to fathom...
...Televised speech on Vietnam, November 3, 1969...
...At a news conference last December, President Nixon stated that as far as he was concerned, "the people of the United States are entitled to know everything that they possibly can with regard to any involvement of the United States abroad...
...This line of reasoning is certain to find strong support in the Senate...
...Within the Nixon Administration, and especially in the State Department, some voices have been raised against the proposed ABM acceleration on grounds that it might jeopardize the strategic arms talks that are to resume in Vienna in April...
...I know that some believe that I should have ended the war immediately after the inauguration by simply ordering our forces home from Vietnam...
...Consequently, the Secretary said, the second phase of ABM deployment "will go forward" this year...
...Once the initial Safeguard authorization was approved, the SS-9 vanished from the Secretary's news conferences just as the Soviet subs were wont to disappear from the Atlantic waters...
...He is a prudent man, and he is holding China in reserve...
...Defense Secretary Melvin Laird discovered the ominous significance of the SS-9 early last year—the Russians, he said, "are going for a first-strike capability . . . there is no question about that"—when the Administration ran into unexpectedly heavy Senate opposition to its Safeguard ABM proposal...
...Announcing the Safeguard ABM system, March 14, 1969...
...asked John R. Gomien, who was Senator Dirksen's administrative assistant and now serves in the same capacity for Senator Ralph T. Smith of Illinois...
...Navy win its appropriations, the Soviet SS-9 missile is turning into a hardy perennial...
...military presence in Laos...
...It might have been a popular move...
...Or we can persist in our search for a just peace through a negotiated settlement if possible, or through continued implementation of our plan for Vietnamization if necessary...
...If we are to have a negotiating position at the Paris peace talks, it must be a position in which we can negotiate from strength and discussion about unilateral withdrawal does not help that position...
...News conference, December 8, 1969...
...Secretary General Thant . . . has bluntly stated in public what he is known to have long ago communicated to American officials in private...
...To head it off, some of Mr...
...There were some who urged I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of American forces...
...At the same news conference, however, Mr...
...Televised speech on Vietnam, May 14, 1969...
...But I would have betrayed my solemn responsibility as President of the United States if I had done so...
...Potomacus The Next Step U.N...
...It is not the easy way...
...The hard, unpopular life of Richard Milhous Nixon: "I should admit at this point that this decision has not been an easy one...
...We have asked the American people to take some bitter medicine...
...I hold a totally different view of the world, and I come to a different conclusion about the direction America must take...
...The presence of substantial numbers of American military "advisers" and the infusion of massive American military aid are well known to the governments of Laos, China, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union, and have been reported by American correspondents in Laos...
...Among the attached letters was one from Robert S. Lindgren, vice president of the Jefferson Trust and Savings Bank of Peoria and co-executor of the Dirksen estate, who suggested that the press ought to foot these funeral bills "as they were the sole beneficiary of this work...
...Members of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which supervises the Congressional press galleries, were astounded recently to receive a sheaf of correspondence pertaining to the Senator's funeral last September, along with bills totaling $647.70 for such items as platforms, decorations, electrical services, and public address systems commissioned for the final rites...
...Now, let's face it: Holding down government spending and holding up the tax rate, and making it harder for people to get credit, is not the kind of policy that makes friends for people in politics...
...Sic transit gloria mundi, as Senator Dirksen probably would have intoned...
...What's more, he added, he may have to take another look at "our deployment of offensive strategic weapons systems," presumably including such costly baubles as advanced missile submarines and new strategic bombers...
...It would be very easy for me to sign a bill which reduces taxes...
...News conference, December 8, 1969...
...The mortal remains of Everett Mc-Kinley Dirksen rest easy (we hope) at the Glendale Memorial Gardens in Pekin, Illinois...
...Is there some way that the press can handle the enclosed bills...
...We have taken the unpopular road to earn back the Government's credibility in fiscal affairs...
...The correspondents respectfully declined...
...But a President has to do what he considers to be right...
...Radio speech on inflation, October 17, 1969...
...I will not engage in it, although I realize it might be popular to do so...
...But it would be disastrous for our nation and the world...
...Now we are in another year, the Pentagon is looking for an accelerated schedule of Safeguard deployment, and the SS-9 is back, more formidable than ever...
...Laird's Pentagon associates have suggested reverting to an older rationale for the ABM—the danger of an "irrational attack" from Communist China...
...Despite vindication of so many of his past prophecies on the course of the Vietnam war—forecasts sadly ignored during most of the Johnson era—Thant's pronouncement evoked no sign of solemn response in Washington...
...And that would seem to be the hitch...
...I will not do that...
...After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office...
...When peace marchers come to Washington it would be very easy to say that I agree with them and I will do what they want...
...But the late Republican leader's ghost stalks the Senate press gallery, where it was his practice to regale the correspondents with his unique olios of folksy humor, political flimflam, special-interest pleading, and resounding rhetoric...
...I can order an immediate, precipitate withdrawal of all Americans from Vietnam without regard to the effects of that action...
...Speech at the Air Force Academy, June 4, 1969...
...But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my Administration and the next election...
...From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow...
...News conference, October 20, 1969...
...Letter to business and labor leaders, October 17, 1969...
...This would have been the easy thing to do...
...Hard decisions had to be made...
...But if I sign the kind of bill which the Senate is about to pass, I would be reducing taxes for some of the American people and raising the prices for all the American people...
...The State Department is insisting on such heavy censorship that the result, in Symington's view, would be publication of an utterly misleading document...
...Thant's statement coincided with reports of new rumblings in Saigon provoked by Thieu's renewed threats against advocates of a neutralist "third force" in his own National Assembly...
...Nixon offered the amazing assertion that "there are no combat troops in Laos...
...James A. Wechsler New York Post December 26, 1969...
...I have chosen the second course...
...But it is one I have made after considering all of the options...
...News conference, April 18,1969...
Vol. 34 • February 1970 • No. 2
